


Caw-fee

by lllsssr



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Fluff, M/M, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-19
Updated: 2017-02-19
Packaged: 2018-09-25 13:35:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9822887
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lllsssr/pseuds/lllsssr
Summary: “You know, Steve, I have been working on it,” Thor said. “You only notice it because you know me too well. I dare say my accent has started to wane. Nay, it has faded considerably already.”***After blowing an undercover mission with his quirks, Thor tries to sound more Midgardian to blend in better.





	

           “You know, Steve, I have been working on it,” Thor said.

            Steve looked disbelieving as he chomped into his burger, which cried a trail of grease, splattering onto the Texas-sized plates of the diner.

            “You only notice it because you know me too well,” Thor continued. “I dare say my accent has started to wane. Nay, it has faded considerably already.”

            Steve crushed a napkin against his mouth and it came away sopping, yellow.

            “How many times do you hear me say ‘nay,’ Thor?” he asked.

            Thor pondered that, shrugged, looked away when he realized Steve was right.

            “It is a decent word,” Thor muttered.

            “I don’t disagree with you,” Steve said, “but if you’re trying to sound like a local, that’s not the way to do it. That’s how you get people staring at you and cocking their heads. Like last time.”

            _Last time_ meant last week, the lookout mission, when Thor had sat in this same diner, on the same vinyl booth seat, wearing a black athletic hoodie and a Yankees cap crushed over his knot of golden hair. He watched a woman at the other end of the room blowing on her steaming tea, patiently waiting for a briefcase to be dropped off. A briefcase containing illegal mutant stimulants.

             No one trusted Thor to play the plant, but Natasha was busy with her own undercover gigs, and Steve had to play the driver. He sat outside the diner in a black SUV, slumped over the steering wheel with boredom, oldies crackling through the radio, the contingency plan in case the woman escaped into a getaway car.

            As bad as Thor was at playing inconspicuous, Steve trusted him even less with the driving.

            “My accent was not what got me caught,” Thor reminded.

            What dissolved his disguise of normal-everyday-Yankees-fan-having-lunch was the fact that he ordered pork chops. Six plates. And ate them with his hands, gripping the bone with his fingers, tearing the meat with his teeth.

            “I remember,” Steve said. “You know you weren’t actually there to eat lunch. You should have ordered something small.”

            “I did,” Thor huffed. He did not understand who Midgardians were trying to impress with how modestly they ate.

            Right now, two fat steaks soaked in their juices on plates in front of him. He had already decimated one, chunks of pink inside strewn about. He leaned over the second.

            “Eat it like a normal person,” Steve chimed in. “Like a Midgardian.”

            Thor analyzed the utensils on the napkin at his elbow—knife, fork, and spoon—that the waitress had arranged for him, and remembered from a Midgardian movie that the proper way of lifting them was from the outside, inward.

            He pinched the stem of the spoon, glanced at the thick steak.

            “Are you serious?” he asked.

            Steve nodded, but stopped when Thor lifted the spoon. “Fork and knife,” he added. “Do you really not know how a spoon works?”

            “I do,” Thor snapped. “Blame our waitress for setting the table improperly.”

            “Er, sure,” Steve said.

            Thor carved the steak into a grid, was doing well enough by his own standards. Then he stabbed the knife into the chunks and popped them into his mouth, kebab-style.

            Steve gave a disapproving head-shake.

            “Let me eat,” Thor grumbled. “Next you will criticize my breathing.”

            “You’ll,” Steve said.

            “What?”

            “Say ‘you’ll.’ Use contractions. Sounds more natural,” Steve said.

            Thor deflated, then corrected himself. “Next _you’ll_ have me bashing my head against the table.”

            Steve grinned through his napkin. “That’s better.”

            Thor turned his attention outside the window. The sky buzzed pink-purple, even though it was nearing midnight. He missed the unpolluted skies of New Mexico, where satellite dishes could trumpet messages and prime numbers and symphonies into the heavens unimpeded.

            He had roots there. Red soil was synonymous with his change from spoiled to worthy; the thin air recalled the weightlessness of Mjolnir lifting back into his hands.

            “I want you to order a cup of coffee,” Steve said.

            Thor pulled his eyes from the window. “Is something stopping you?”

            “For you, I mean,” Steve said. “I want you to order a cup of coffee like a Midgardian would.”

            “How is this…” Thor cleared his throat, then said, “I would like one coffee. Please.”

            Midgardians were always tagging their sentences with “please.” They cared so much what strangers thought of them.

            Steve looked like he was trying not to frown.

            “And thank you,” Thor added.

            Steve shook his head. “Like this: Can I get a coffee?”

            “Can I get a coffee,” Thor repeated.

            “Try not to sound so stilted,” Steve said.

            “What do you mean by stilted?”

            “Get a coffee,” Steve repeated, casual.

            Thor’s voice was resonant and his pronunciation precise. “Get a coffee,” he said again, as if it were a verbal test in finishing school.

            “Coffee,” Steve said. His New York accent spiked.

            “Coffee.”

            “Caw-fee.”

            “Coffee,” Thor said.

             He stopped when he realized they were just parroting the word to each other, nothing else, no feedback. And at that point, Steve’s accent had lost itself on the backstreets of old Brooklyn—something he only overhead in conversations Steve had with Bucky, where they traveled back in time, sounding like construction workers sharing a girder for lunch. It probably would have drawn as much attention as Thor’s accent.

            He flagged down the waitress, who bustled over, no other tables to occupy her attention.

            The diner was cautiously empty after the shootout last week—the one over the briefcase, after Thor had blown his cover. No one wanted to get caught between an AK-47 and Mjolnir just for a patty melt.

            “Refills?” the waitress asked, already reaching for the water pitcher.

            Thor shook his head, sucked in a breath, pushed his tongue against his teeth, and did his best impression of Steve.

            “Ken I getta cup of cawfee?” he drawled.

            He expected the waitress to nod and patter away like he had said the most banal thing possible, but instead she stared.

            Steve, too. Even worse, he gawked like Thor had splashed coffee right into his face.

            “Is that what I sound like?” Steve whispered.

            The waitress looked between them and stuttered, “I—I’m sorry, do you actually want the coffee? Or was that just a joke?” She pitched in a half-laugh, just in case.

            Thor sank into his seat. The mushy booth ate him until he was shorter than Steve.

            “No. I would just like a box for my food,” he muttered. Then he added, “Please.”

            The waitress left, returned, dumped their leftovers into boxes for them. Steve unfolded dollars from his wallet and Thor remembered tipping was a custom here. He pinned a twenty underneath his empty glass.

             Outside on the pockmarked porch of the diner, the night licked their skin. Thor’s hair already began to warp from the humidity. He ducked toward the SUV they still held on to after the mission, when Steve snagged at his elbow, stopped him.

            Thor looked up, realized the loud Latin music he heard was pouring from the open doors of two beaters so old it looked like their wheels could no longer support them, though one bounced nimbly when a man squatted onto the bumper. He laughed and chattered with his friends, other men wearing sagging clothes. Clouds of ink bloomed out of their sleeves, onto their arms and necks.

            They had gathered in a loose knot behind the SUV, blocking it in.

            “Trouble,” Steve said. “That’s what happens. Crime follows crime.”

            He meant gangs were moving in after hearing about the shootout and drug drop off at the diner, like dirty water filling a pothole.

            Thor hated to be reminded of the old mission again. If he had just done his job, not shucked his cover for pork chops, the situation would have been pruned, not flowering, spreading.

            “I will handle it,” he said, tugging free of Steve’s hand.

            He crossed the lot, stepped into the circle. The tallest one seemed to be the leader. Thor kept his words simple and ditched the idea of imitating Steve.

             It took only a minute to become something like a lynchpin, so that when he left the circle, the ring crumbled and floated aside, opening the SUV to the rest of the lot.

            He waved Steve over.

            They slid into the front seats.

            “That involved a lot less punching than I thought it would,” Steve said, snapping on his seat belt. “It’s not easy getting a gang to do you a favor, even just something small like that. What did you tell them?”

            “I doubt that was a gang,” Thor snorted. “And what do you think I told them? I just asked them to move.”

            “That’s it? No static electricity or anything?”

            Thor shook his head. “They may have taken more kindly since I spoke their language.”

            Accent or not, he could at least get the words across with Allspeak.

            “Sometimes you make things more difficult than they need to be, Steve,” he said.

            Steve shrugged. “I might have a habit of doing that.”

            He turned over the engine and crawled out of the parking space.

            The diner rolled past, and through the glass, the few people hunched over their bowls of soup and hunks of meat blurred together into a bland smear. Thor couldn’t tell one tired face from another.

            He wondered if he really wanted to lose his accent, find himself in the middle of the nameless crowd, where no one questioned or stared or even glanced his direction. Of course, he could be anything—had journeyed from worthy to worthless, royal to banished, and back again. But was ordinary a destination on that road?

            The diner shrank to a pinprick in the rearview mirror.

            He could still help without being invisible. Saving Steve from an unnecessary punch-out was proof enough.

            The sky overhead held no individual stars, just a milky wash of dim light.

            After a minute, Thor said, “Next time we have an undercover mission, I will drive the car.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading. Please leave a comment if you liked.


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